28 February 2009

Twenty pesos, thrity pesos.” “You serious? True? Now?” “Now mon, ennytime. Too hot now” he added with distaste. “No like gurls when hot day. Wait tonight. You like shade.” I didn’t want the shade but I wanted the girls. I woke up Neal. “Hey Man I told you in Texas I’d get you laid---allright, stretch your bones and wake up boy, we’ve got girls waiting for us.” What? what?” he cried leaping up haggard. “Where? where?” “This boy Gregor’s going to show us where.” “Well lessgo, lessgo!” Neal leaped out of the car and clasped Gregor’s hand. There was a group of other boys hanging around the station and grinning, half of them barefoot, all wearing floppy strawhats. “Man” said Neal to me “ain’t this a nice way to spend an afternoon. It’s so much cooler than Denver poolhalls. Gregor, you got gurls? Where? A donday?” he cried in Spanish. “Dig that Jack, I’m speaking Spanish.” “Ask him if we can get any tea. Hey kid, you got mari-ju-a-na?” The kid nodded gravely. “Sho, ennytime mon. Come with me.” “Hee! Whee! Hoo! Yelled Neal. He was wide awake and jumping up and down in that drowsy Mexican street. “Let’s all go!” I was passing Lucky Strikes to the other boys. They were getting a great pleasure out of us and especially Neal. They turned to each other with cupped hands and rattled off comments about the mad American cat. “Dig them Jack talking about us and digging. Oh my goodness what a world!” We all got in the car and lurched off. Frank Jeffries had been sleeping soundly and woke up to this incredible madness. We drove way out to the desert the other side of town and turned on a rutty dirt road that made the car bounce as it never bounced before. Up ahead was Gregor’s house. It sat on the edge of Cactus flats overtopped by a few trees, just a dobe crackerbox, with a few men lounging around in the yard. “Who’s that?” cried Neal all excited. “Those my brothers. My mother there too. My sister too. That my family. I married, I live downtown.” What about your mother?” flinched Neal. “What she say about marijuana.” “Oh she get it for me.” And as we waited in the car Gregor got out and loped over to the house and said a few words to an old lady, who promptly turned and went to the garden in back and began pulling marijuana plants out of the earth. Meanwhile